All the Missing Girls (23 page)

Laura had gone pale and was looking directly at me. “Monica,” she said.

“What?” Monica said.

Laura pushed away from her toward me, but I backed out of the room again.

“Oh. Oops,” I heard Monica say.

There was no way to get through this shower without making a scene. By embarrassing either Laura or her friends.

Laura still looked pale as she followed me into the kitchen.

“I'm so sorry,” I said, searching for my purse. “I have to go.”

“Nic, don't. Please.”

I found the strap to my black bag, swung it over my shoulder. “Congratulations, Laura,” I said.

They were right. This wasn't my place. I knew my place, and it wasn't here—wasn't in Cooley Ridge.

Laura couldn't keep up. I disappeared inside that storage room closet, walked up the back steps, and remembered the combination from three years earlier—
Ten-ten-ten, people really are too trusting,
Tyler had said—pushed through the unlocked storm cellar door, and was gone.

CORINNE WASN'T AT FAULT,
but she wasn't innocent. That's what Monica—and everyone else—implied. Corinne incited passion
and rage, lust and anger. Someone couldn't help himself. But she brought it on herself, obviously. That's what you say to convince yourself:
It
will never be me.

She didn't know her place.

She incited too much passion.

It's typically men who commit murder in the heat of passion. Their fingers tightening of their own accord around our slender necks. Their practiced arm swinging forward in an arc, beyond their own intention, into our fragile cheekbones. Passion. Heat. Instinct.

Women are more deliberate. Adding to silent lists of slights, tallying the offenses, building a case, retreating inward.

Passion belongs to the men. Statistics say an unplanned attack will likely come from them. So the investigation started there: Jackson, Tyler, Daniel, her father.

But the police were wrong to start there, with statistics. They needed to start with Corinne, needed to know her first. Then they would've seen that perhaps there is nothing more passionate than loving someone in spite of yourself. Didn't matter who you were. If you loved Corinne, it was all passion.

What the detectives wanted were facts. Names. Events. Grudges and slights that could boil over into a girl losing her life outside the county fair. Hannah Pardot exposed
that
Corinne—the real one. But I didn't know whether it really mattered. Whether that one was any more real than the one I knew, the one living inside my head. A haunting, blurred image, twirling in a field of sunflowers. I never could grasp her, but she was the realest person I knew.

Jump,
she'd said. And then she leaned in close, so only I could hear, and whispered,
If I were you, I'd do it.

But I didn't.

The facts. The facts were fluid, and changed, depending on the point of view. The facts were easily distorted. The facts were not always right.

What would she do?
they should've asked.

After I said no.

After Daniel pushed her away.

After Jackson abandoned her.

What would she do if we all pushed her away in a single day? If she had nowhere else to go? What would she
do
?

I can feel her cold fingers at my elbows, and her whisper becomes a scream:
Jump.

You want to believe you're not the saddest person on earth. That there's someone worse, someone there with you. Someone suffering beside you through the unfathomable darkness.

Jump,
she said, like I had no future.

But she was wrong. So wrong.

Because when I was standing on the edge of the Ferris wheel cart, my breath lost to the wind and Tyler waiting for me down below, everything became so strikingly clear.

I WANT TO TELL
someone about that night. About Corinne. About what she said.

About me.

But I don't know how. It's impossible, really. They're not separate things. They come in pairs. One event gets tied up in another and you can't tell one story without the second. They're forever entwined in your mind.

Two days before the fair, standing in her bathroom, Corinne holding the test in her hand. “Ninety seconds,” she said, not letting me see. The ticking of the clock from her bedroom nightstand. “Tick-tock, Nic.”

“I'm glad you think this is funny,” I said.

“Moment of truth.” She looked first, and I had the sudden urge to rip it from her hands.

She smiled, flipping it around.

The two blue lines, and my stomach rolled again. I sank to my knees on her perfectly white tiled floor, leaning over the toilet. She rubbed my upper back. “Shh,” she said. “It'll be okay.”

I sat on the floor and watched as she stuffed the test deep inside the box of Skittles already in her trash can. “Don't worry,” she said, her mouth twisted into half a smile, “my mom had me when she was eighteen, too.”

I shouldn't have let her talk me into taking the test right then, in her bathroom, with her standing over me. She shouldn't have been first. Not before Tyler.

“I have to go,” I said. She didn't stop me as I stumbled out of her room, out of her house, down to the river, where I sat and stared at the rushing water and cried, because I knew no one else could hear me. I called for Tyler to meet me there, and I made myself stop crying before I told him.

Two days later, and I see Tyler from the top of the Ferris wheel, and I think for just a moment that I have everything.

Corinne dared me to climb on the outside of the cart, and I wanted to do it. I wanted to know it was as easy as letting go, and say no. I wanted to feel the rush, the power, the hope—everything my life could be.

But then I felt her breath in my ear:
Jump,
she said, and in that moment, I was scared of what Corinne might do. How dark she really was, deep inside. My life was just part of the game for her. A piece to move, to see how far I could bend. How much she must've hated me, hated every one of us, underneath it all.

I was scared that she would push me, that Bailey would never tell, that everyone would think I wanted to die when I wanted nothing more than to live in that moment. For Tyler below, and for the life we might have, all the possibilities stretching before me, existing all at once.

But then I'm thrown off balance, the world skews sideways, the sting of the fist on my face.

Corinne comes running to bear witness to the destruction.

A girl eating ice cream watches on, a memory that never dies for her.

My arm goes instinctively to my stomach as I fall to the dirt, because I've just understood how fragile everything is, how paralyzingly temporary we all are, and that something is beginning for me. Something worth holding on to.

I SPENT THE REST
of the afternoon after Laura's shower down by the river again, until it turned dark. Until I knew Daniel would be gone. Until the house was empty and the walls were wet and sticky, the paint fumes suffocating.

I ignored Daniel's calls, instead texting him a brief
I'm home.

Coming here?
he texted back.

No. Going to sleep,
I wrote.

But I didn't sleep. I didn't do anything.

I let myself have this one night to feel sorry for myself. Just one night. To mourn for Corinne and my mother, for Daniel and my father, for me and for Tyler and for all the lost things.

Tomorrow I'd pick myself up. Tomorrow there would be no more crying. Tomorrow I'd remember that I had kept going.

The Day Before

DAY
5

I
shouldn't be here.
I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be here.

I was rocking on the couch with the television on in front of me and a fresh cup of coffee in my hands, wearing yesterday's clothes, the fabric stiff and accusing against my skin.

The alarm clock sounded in the bedroom, and I could choreograph the next few moments: He'd hit snooze twice, then curse repeatedly as he raced to the shower, throw on some clothes, pull a hat down over his still-wet hair, fill his travel mug with yesterday's reheated coffee.

I sat on the sofa, legs folded underneath me, sipping my fresh coffee from his ECC mug.

Instead, Tyler came straight out of the bedroom, like he'd heard the television, even though I had it only one notch off silent. He was standing in a pair of black boxers, his blue eyes completely awake. I took in his tanned chest and stomach. He'd put on a little weight since the last time I'd been home, but you didn't notice in clothes.
I was the only person who could map the changes over the span of the decade—my hands tracing over every contour, like muscle memory—just as he could with me.

I made myself focus on the screen, and I gestured my mug toward it. “Just catching up on the news,” I said, watching the reporter's mouth move. She was standing in front of a poster of Annaleise Carter, outlining the facts once more: last seen by her brother, walking into the woods. Now entering the second day of searching, including helicopters. No sign of her. Nothing ruled out. Nothing new.

“I thought maybe you left,” Tyler said. He was almost at the couch.

I kept my eyes glued to the screen. “I need a ride home. I made coffee,” I said. “Fresh. In the kitchen.”

“Couldn't sleep?” His voice drifted through the apartment as he opened a cabinet. There wasn't much to it—this living room, his bedroom, and the kitchen with the island in the middle. His laptop was closed on the coffee table.

“Not really,” I said. Which wasn't entirely true. I'd fallen into a deep and peaceful sleep almost immediately—the best since I'd been back. It was the noise from people leaving the bar at closing time that jerked me awake, and I couldn't find the way back to where I'd been, only Tyler could do that, talking me out of my own head, letting me forget myself. I'd spent the last several hours feeling sick to my stomach.

He picked up the blanket crumpled on the seat beside me and hung it over the armrest, where it had been last night. He sat beside me, a little too close—mug in hand, his right arm behind me, his fingers moving absently in my hair. I felt the tension releasing, my body uncoiling itself. I closed my eyes for a second, listening to Tyler sip his coffee.

This. Us. There's a comfort to it. Something too easy to get lost inside for a weekend.

My phone rang on the table and I grabbed it, expecting Daniel, and felt the blood drain from my face when I saw Everett's name on the display. I set my mug down and answered. “Let me call you right back,” I said before I could register the sound of his voice. “Ten minutes.”

“I'm on my way in to the office,” he said. “I'll try you again at lunch.”

“Okay. Later, then.” I hung up and leaned forward on the couch, my head in my hands.

Tyler stood. “I have to get ready for work,” he said. “I'll drop you on the way.” He headed for the bathroom, paused at the bedroom entrance. “Just do me one favor: Don't call him the second I step into the shower.”

I narrowed my eyes at his back. “I wasn't going to.”

“Right.”

“Don't be like this,” I said. “Don't—”

He spun around, one hand on the doorjamb, the other gesturing toward me. “You're asking me not to be like this?”

“I was upset!” I said.

“I know, I was here.”

“I wasn't thinking.”

“That's bullshit.”

He glared at me from the doorway to his bedroom. I focused on the reporter's mouth once more. “I don't want to fight with you,” I said.

“No, I know exactly what you want me for.”

Sharp and cutting, but nothing compared to the look on his face. Everything right about the night before, overexposed in the daylight and undeniably wrong.

“I'm sorry. But what do you want from me?”

His eyes grew wider, if possible. “You're not serious,” he said. He shook his head, ran a hand down his face. “What exactly are you
sorry for, Nic? I'm just curious. For this, right now? For last year? The one before that? Or for leaving the first time without saying a goddamn word?”

I stood, my limbs shaking with adrenaline. “Oh, don't do this now. Don't bring this up now.”

This was our unspoken agreement. We didn't discuss it. Couldn't look back and couldn't look forward.

After I graduated, the plan was to wait a year. Save up some money, leave together. But Corinne disappeared and all the plans went to shit. Daniel stopped working on the renovation, gave me what money he could. I left by myself—one year at a community college, then transferring to a four-year university with student housing and loans and a campus that existed unto itself, segregated from the rest of the world. Someplace safe and far away.

“Or are you sorry for changing your number?” Tyler continued, coming a step closer. “For coming home five months later like it was all nothing?”

“I can't do this,” I said. “We were kids, Tyler. Just kids.”

“Doesn't mean it wasn't real,” he said, his voice softening. “We could've made it.”

“Could've. Might've. There's a lot of hypothetical in that. We didn't, Tyler. We didn't make it.”

“Because you disappeared! Literally.”

“I didn't disappear, I left.”

“You were there one day and then you were gone. How is that any different? Your
brother
had to tell me, Nic.”

“I couldn't stay,” I said, my voice barely making it across the room.

“I know,” he said. “But it wasn't a temporary thing. A temporary promise. I meant what I said to you.”

He let me drive his truck because his hand was all messed up. I kept touching my fingers to my face, expecting to find something new, something
more substantial than a red mark and a swollen lip. “For real, Nic, are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I'm so done with them all. With Daniel, Corinne. I'm done with her games. I'm done with my dad. I'm done with this place.”

“Pull over,” he said.

“Where?” The streets were dark and curvy, and there wasn't much of a shoulder, if any, in most places. But there were these outlooks over the valley—guardrails set up around tiny rectangles jutting over the rocks below.

“Anywhere.”

But I thought I knew why he wanted me to pull over, and I didn't want to be caught in the glare of the headlights. “We're almost to the caverns,” I said. I pulled his truck into the lot, pulled it off the road, over the lip of rocks and into the clearing, mostly hidden from view by a row of trees.

I turned off the engine. Unbuckled my seat belt. But he didn't pull me toward him. Didn't turn to face me at first.

“I'll take care of you, you know that,” he said. “I'll be good to you. I'll love you forever, Nic.”

“I know you will,” I said. It was the one thing I was sure of.

He reached into his glove compartment and pulled out a ring. It was simple. Beautiful. Perfect. Two silver bands woven together. A line of blue gems where they interlocked.

Forever.
It's the kind of thing you say when forever has only been a handful of years. When it's not decades before you become those Russian nesting dolls.

There was a small part of me that was still childish, stubborn in her hope, thinking I could somehow have everything. That Tyler could become Everett, that Everett could become Tyler. That I could be all the versions of me, stacked inside one another, and find someone who would want them all. But that's childhood. Before you realize that every step is a choice. That something must be given up for something to be gained. Everything on a scale, a
weighing of desires, an ordering of which you want more—and what you'd be willing to give for it.

Ten years ago, I made that choice for the both of us, ripping off a Band-Aid and taking the skin with it.
A clean break,
I'd thought back then. But I'd never given him that choice, never let him have any say.
You disappeared,
he'd said—

“I left, and I'm sorry, but that was ten years ago,” I said. “I can't go back and undo it.”

“You keep coming back, Nic.”

I wasn't sure whether he meant to Cooley Ridge or to him. “You're going to be late.”

He dragged his fingers slowly and forcibly through his hair. “You make me crazy,” he said, turning for the bathroom. The shower turned on, and I could hear cabinets slamming, sense him losing his cool behind the closed door.

It happens like this—men losing themselves in moments of passion. We drive them to it. It's not their fault.

I closed my eyes and leaned against the counter beside the refrigerator, feeling my nails digging into my palms, and slowly counted to one hundred.

WE HAD TO EXIT
through the front door near the bar entrance. I kept my head down to the traffic. I followed Tyler to his truck around back, rested my head against the window as we drove.

We were silent on the ride home. He pulled into my driveway and I hesitated with my fingers on the handle, staring out the window. “Will you be okay here?” he asked.

The house. Skinny and tilted and waiting for me. Beyond that, the Carter property and the search for a missing girl. I left the car, but he lowered the passenger window. “Nic?” he said.

I took a second to look back as I walked away. He'd lost every
girl he was with whenever I came home, and the ghost of me followed him everywhere in this town. Not sure why he did it—if he really thought this time would be any different. That this time I'd stay. I was breaking him over and over, every time I left, and this was something I could put an end to. A gift. A debt I owed him for everything I'd lost him.

I couldn't come back after all. The distance only increases.

“I can't see you anymore,” I said.

“Sure, okay,” like he didn't believe me.

“Tyler, I'm asking you. Please. I can't see you anymore.”

Silence as he gripped the wheel tighter.

“I'm ruining your life, Tyler. Can't you see that?”

His silence and his stare followed me across the yard, up the porch steps, until the front door latched shut behind me.

I supposed, when he looked closely, he could see that I was.

THE HOUSE FELT DIFFERENT.
Unsafe, unknown, too many possibilities existing all at once. Too many voices whispered back at me from the walls. The garage through the living room windows, so unassuming in the sunlight, and beyond, the woods stretching infinitely into the distance.

No, I would not be okay here.

I drove to the church and went down to the basement, where Officer Fraize was organizing about one tenth as many people as the day before. He gave me a map with a section bordered in orange highlighter, and he directed me toward two kids with jet-black hair picking through yesterday's donated baked goods.

“Hi,” I said to the girl's back.

She turned and spoke around a piece of pound cake. “Hi,” she said. She was a little older than I'd thought—younger than I was but not quite a kid anymore. “You with us?”

Us
being her and a guy about the same age, two days of scruff on an otherwise unremarkable face. Siblings, I guessed from the hair color.

“Looks like it,” I said.

“I'm Britt,” she said. “This is Seth.” She looked down at the map, and I saw her roots were plain brown, several shades lighter than the rest of her hair. Maybe not siblings. “They have us following the river, looks like. Should be easy enough.”

“Let's park at CVS,” Seth said. “I need some Advil or something.” He winced for impact.

“Hangover,” Britt whispered, feeding him a piece of cake with her fingers.

I FOLLOWED SETH'S PICKUP
and waited for him to come out of the store. Besides the Advil or something, he also got some candy, and the crinkling wrappers accompanied us as we crossed the street and entered the woods. He chewed loudly until we picked up a curve of the river, and then all I could hear was the water trickling along.

I hugged the edge, keeping my gaze on the water, looking for objects that might be hidden underneath. The water wasn't deep, and I could see the rocks and roots below, even in the shade. We reached a clearing, the sunlight bright, my eyes narrowing in response, and the glare of the sun reflected off the surface too sharply, blurring my vision.

“You okay?” Britt had her fingers curled in my sleeve just as I felt my balance start to lean.

“Yeah,” I said. “Checking to see if maybe she fell in.”

Britt pulled me farther from the edge. “Careful,” she said. “I heard they'll get men in the water eventually, but if she's in there”—she pointed down the bank—“it's not like it matters how fast we find her.”

Seth unwrapped another candy, shoved the wrapper in the pocket of his pants. “She'd think that was fitting, I bet,” he said. “Very Ophelia. Very art. Very
significant.
”

“You were friends with her?” I asked.

The girl nodded. “Yeah, I guess. Except not really. I mean, we were, kind of, before she became Art School Annaleise.”

“What was she before?”

“Just like the rest of us,” she said. Britt picked a slightly worn path a little farther from the river, guiding me along with her.